The new emergency department rooms are expected to open on Nov. 20th.
Rendering of Frederick Health Hospital following the completion of the Critical Care Project
(Courtesy Frederick Health Hospital)
Frederick, Md (KM) There’s good news when it comes to the construction of the Critical Care Complex at Frederick Health Hospital. “Well, I’m very pleased to report that we’re ahead of schedule. And the final phase of our Critical Care expansion project will complete next week. And we will have 11 additional emergency department rooms that will be opening on November 20th,” says Cheryl Cioffi, Vice President and Chief Operations Officer at Frederick Health Hospital.
She said the project also included the expansion of the intensive care unit, and the cardiac catheterization lab. “We are excited because this project allowed us to completely renovate and expand our 20-bed intensive care unit. It allowed us to relocate our pediatrics department to a brand new wing on the first floor next to the adult ED {emergency department} so that children can have easy access to both emergency care and impatient care,”: says Cioffi.
The project involved three floors of one wing of the hospital on West 7th Street in Frederick. It was a multi-year, $47-million project, says Cioffi.
While the work was underway, the hospital staff continued to serve patients. “So it’s never easy to do a construction project of this scale, but we were certainly blessed with great contractors and sub-contractors who worked with our team and our medical staff to make sure that we were providing a seamless possible care to our patients. We just have a great team that navigated it very well,”; Cioffi says.
She adds this expansion of the Critical Care Complex will benefit the local community. “We now have more room to prioritize patients coming into the emergency department. We have nine new crisis beds for those with behavioral health needs,” says Cioffi. “Just really has increased our capacity to continue caring for our growing community while providing updated amenities and private patient bathrooms and those types of things that are fantastic.”
And she says it will help reduce wait times, an issue a lot of hospitals across the country are dealing with. “The additional rooms will help us with that through-put because it simply gives us more patients spaces to pull people back and initiate their treatments,” says Cioffi. “So, yes, we absolutely expect it to have a continued positive affect in reducing wait times.”
Individual donations helped Frederick Health Hospital pay for this expansion project. “Donations are always welcome. We’ve always benefited from the great generosity of our community and that certainly will help us into the future as we continue growing to meet the needs,” says Cioffi.
By Kevin McManus